Explicit and implicit speaker evaluations and their differential attitudinal determinants

Previous speaker evaluation studies have traditionally assessed the influence of attitudes
toward languages with explicit self-report measures. Social-cognitive theories positing a
differential influence of explicit and implicit attitudes on controlled versus automatic
evaluative responses have not been addressed in this domain thus far. In addition to
separating attitudes toward languages from attitudes toward nationality, the aim of this
study was to test whether explicit and implicit speaker evaluations refer to distinct concepts.
We expected that explicit attitudes would be stronger predictors of deliberate
speaker evaluations than implicit attitudes would. By contrast, we expected that automatic
evaluations examined with an evaluative priming task would primarily reflect implicit
attitudes. Results showed that explicit speaker evaluations were influenced by explicit
attitudes toward nationality, whereas implicit evaluations were mainly predicted by implicit
attitudes toward nationality. The crucial role of speaker’s nationality in speaker
evaluation processes is further discussed within the framework of implicit group processes.